Losing a child to cancer takes financial toll, too

By Amy Norton – Tue Jan 4, 4:42 pm ET

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Many families who lose a child to cancer face not only emotional devastation, but serious financial problems as well, a new study suggests.

Interviewing U.S. and Australian parents who had lost a child to cancer, researchers found that most had needed to cut down on work during their child's illness -- resulting in sometimes severe income loss.

Overall, one-quarter of U.S. and 39 percent of Australian families said they had faced a "great deal" of financial hardship during their child's treatment.

One-third of Australian families and 19 percent of those in the U.S. lost more than 40 percent of their income because at least one parent had to quit or cut down on work. And that kind of income loss is generally considered "catastrophic," lead researcher Dr. Veronica Dussel, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, said in an e-mail.

"Our results underscore that the cost of losing a child to cancer exceeds emotional grief," Dussel and her colleagues report in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

The study, the researchers say, is one of the first to look at the financial toll of losing a child to cancer. And it suggests that their economic strains may be even greater than those of families with children who survive cancer, although the reasons are unclear.

In addition, Dussel pointed out, the toll was greatest for families who already had relatively low incomes.

These families generally lost the greatest percentage of income, and 16 percent of U.S. families and 22 percent of Australian families slid below the poverty line during their child's illness.

The findings are based on 141 families with a child treated at one of two U.S. children's hospitals, and 89 families from one Australian medical center.  FULL STORY
 
I think a case could be made that losing a child or CHILDREN to CPS is worse than them dying.  On top of the grief of loss comes the costs, time demands, and the Legal Abuse.  CPS in your life will kill YOU

"There is something bad happening to our children in family courts today that is causing them more harm than drugs, more harm than crime and even more harm than child molestation." Judge Watson L. White Superior Court Judge, Cobb County, Georgia